


Out by the Fire Breathing

by Fission



Category: Shameless (US)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Future Fic, M/M, because really, long-winded cross-country trip, mickey character piece masquerading as a gallavich fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-06-16
Updated: 2014-06-16
Packaged: 2018-02-04 21:41:00
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,206
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1794112
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Fission/pseuds/Fission
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>So, when Mandy asks, what’s going to happen now?, and with the sting of another shot washing down his throat, setting flames to his lungs to ground him, Mickey turns into the top of her head, says, easy, I’m gonna track the fucker down.</p><p>(alternatively, Mickey goes on a long, long trip)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Out by the Fire Breathing

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to Jazzy and Kensie who, in varying degrees, both listened to me complain and lament about this piece for days on end. Title from the Pixies' song 'Here Comes Your Man'. Unbetaed.

_i. Chicago_

 

There is a yellow sticky note on Mickey’s pillow.

Three months have passed since Fiona first came by with the word ‘ _bipolar_ ’ on her tongue and a heavy resignation to keep her warmer than three layers of clothing ever could.

Two months and two weeks since Svetlana, lit cigarette dangling from leering mouth, pulled a blue-haired, heavily-tatted, wispy little thing into Terry’s vacant room, giggling like there was still something innocent and untouched left inside of her. The girl, Nika, stayed.

Two months and one week since Mickey and Fiona dragged Ian to the clinic where, after two hours in the waiting room, he was, predictably, diagnosed with bipolar. A pill bottle full of small pink nubs was handed to him by a nurse with tight thin lips, the warning clear: no more freebies. That same week, Nika showed Mickey her secret drawer of fun. When he held up and rattled an identical pill bottle as Ian’s, she smiled wickedly, said, _he ain’t the only one with a fucked up brain_.

One month and one week since the Gallaghers, plural or not, stopped dropping by at all hours of the day. The nightly calls dried up, too. Life went on, the earth kept rotating, and Ian never asked.

One month since Ian finally began getting better. Better enough, at least, to join them for breakfast most days and watch reruns of South Park on the couch with Mandy afterwards. There were such violent purples sunk into the space above his cheeks that Mickey couldn’t meet his eyes for a long time.

Ian starts up at the Fairy Tale in Boystown again not long after that, working as a full time dancer. Bile builds up in the back of Mickey’s throat when Ian tells him the only reason his boss let him back is because several regulars considered him a personal favorite. They develop a routine; Ian tags along when Mickey heads to the Alibi to check on the upstairs rub-and-tug, chats to Kev about nothing. They grab lunch at Ian’s or at some no-name restaurant, the food so greasy it sits heavy on top of their guts for hours after. Mickey lurks around during every one of Ian’s shifts, scowling at anyone who so much as thinks about skimming a wrinkled hand where it doesn’t belong. Ian only ever smiles wide and affectionate when he turns to the bar, dropping any hints of the act for just those few seconds.

A precarious calm takes over the Milkovich house. With the help of a torch-wielding Nika and Svetlana with a claw hammer, Kenyatta gets bounced to the curb. Mandy crosses her heart, swears and promises up and down never again, her voice wavering, but only a little. The five of them seem wary of each other for a while after that, tiptoeing creatures who have no clue how to play nice, but, against all odds, the three girls strike up a steady friendship and no one really stood a chance against Ian’s good-natured charms.

Everything is good. Mickey can’t remember the last time he’s felt so content in his own skin, and he reckons if this is the bar, it’s set pretty high. His life is women and a baby and a red-headed fucker who licks shivers up his spine. He still has nightmares of his father, waking up in cold sweats, forgetting how to breathe in that moment right before he can blink the sleep away, and flinches, fingers immediately wrapping around the handle of the hid away gun at his waistline, whenever someone shouts ' _faggot'_  in public, but he’s learning to accept, and it almost feels like growing up, like being part of a happy family.

On a Sunday, a few days before, they’re both in bed, lying on their backs, with kicked off sheets pooling around their ankles. The humid spring air is invading every pore of Mickey’s body, and he can feel sweat prickling on his chest and in the crack of his ass.

Beside him, Ian shifts and Mickey wants to snap at him to stop being alive, but the wound of those dark days is still fresh in both their minds and he needs to let it scab over and heal. So he keeps his mouth screwed shut, listens as Ian turns towards him, reaching a hand out to rest on the crook of his elbow.

“Mick, are you awake?”

Mickey only grunts in reply.

“Can I ask you something?” Ian says, inching closer, palm rubbing down the length of Mickey’s forearm until he finds his wrist.

“Fucking spit it out then. I’m tired, man,” Mickey says, haphazardly tossing a glare out of his peripheral. A scalding hotness shoots up his arm at the touch. He should shake the grip off, but they’re alone and he can’t bring himself to. He keeps still.

Ian stalls and has that screwed up look on his face that means he’s thinking real hard about something, tasting whatever it is in his mouth, before he blurts, words in a quick rush, “Would you leave if I got as bad as before?”

“What?” Mickey jerks his head and props himself on one arm to stare straight at Ian, who is fidgeting, eyes darting around like they’re counting the number of escape routes, his lips pursed and dragged to one corner. “Why the fuck would you ask me that?”

“Shouldn’t I?” Ian mumbles, tightening his grip on Mickey’s wrist. He adds a belated “just wondering” before attempting a casual smile. It is hollow, lovely with sadness.

“No, you shouldn’t,” Mickey says, ignoring the bullshit. He levels him a long stare, holds it until Ian reluctantly looks up and meets his eyes.

“It’s just, I know what it’s like, right?” Ian says, “We were always waiting with Monica, to come back, to fuck up again, to leave, or whatever. And I don’t want that for you. I don’t want you to be stuck with me.” He winces, like the words are corrosive and scars at his throat on the way out.

“Come on,” Mickey says, impatient. He flips over onto his stomach, still propped up by his arms. “Get that stupid ass thought out of your head. You’re not making me do anything. Jesus Christ, Ian, I’m not fucking stuck. I make my own decisions, all right? If I’m here, it’s ‘cause I wanna be.”

“Sure?” Ian asks tentatively.

“Sure,” Mickey says, a small smile playing on his lips. “Never leaving you.” Ian’s mouth forms a lowercase ‘o’, chin trembling ever so slightly, a lost look on his face, and then he’s surging up and pressing their lips together in a fierce kiss, licking the saliva glistening on Mickey’s bottom lip. Mickey pinches his eyes shut and smirks at the pressure, barely able to conceal a groan at how good it feels, before opening to let Ian in. His tongue strokes along the tip of Ian’s, and his hand twists and fists at red hair. Ian arches his back at the same time Mickey rolls his hips and presses his torso down until they’re flush against each other. Ian, refusing to break the kiss, pants heavily into Mickey’s mouth like he wants to breathe for the both of them, and Mickey lets him, fills his lungs up with Ian.

They don’t fuck that night. The temperature fluctuates in the wrong direction and the humidity is enough to do them both in, but they cling defiantly together, nevertheless. When he’s somewhere between conscious states, closer to dozing off than awake, he hears Ian whisper a, “’k” into the fine pricks of hair on the back of his head, before digging in even closer. If he’s going to burn off his own skin, Mickey thinks, Ian’s the way he’d like to go out.

Not much thought is given to any of it until Thursday when Mickey decides to make a snack run at the dollar store a couple of blocks down that stocks the best off-brand hard candy. Ian was doing a pull-up set, but now he’s just hovering at the doorway of their bedroom, stalking Mickey’s movements closely. Mickey rolls his eyes while fishing for two matching sneakers, ignoring it as best he can. Ian’s been acting weird as fuck recently and Mickey doesn’t want to deal with it, at least not until his mouth is stuffed full of enough sweets to send him into a sugar coma.

When he gets back, arms ladened with bulk bags, and a moon fairy glow in the dark shit, identical to the kind Mandy used to dunk in their filled bathroom sink, laughing manically when it grew to five times its original size, he finds the house empty. The TV is still on, flickering red and blue lights illuminating their couch, volume turned way too loud.

“Gallagher!” Mickey yells over the explosion on the boxset, and his feet are moving of their own accord, carrying him mechanically through the doorframe into the edge of his bedroom, and then a sharp intake, a strangled, panicked and quieter, “Ian?”

If he’s being honest, and sometimes he allows himself to be, he always assumed it would be him this time around, that if their relationship imploded, and after the smoke thinned and the heavy dust blew away in wind-swept trails, he would be the one to walk away. Would have put money on it, if he was the gambling type, or if he had any cash to spare.

Ian beats him to it. Looking at his room is like looking at a preserved exhibit in a museum, evidence of a life lived so long ago. There is no trace of Ian having ever been here except for an overlooked navy hoodie half-tucked underneath the bed and a yellow sticky note on Mickey’s pillow that reads, _Don’t come after me._

 

_ii._

 

He goes after him, of course, he does.

Three texts buzz in quick succession, one after another; none of the girls have seen him. Mickey is out the door and running down the sidewalk before he realizes how tight his chest is, how bone-deep tired he feels.

The Gallagher’s house looms into sight and the first person that comes into view is Lip, seated on the porch stairs, wearing a dirt brown wifebeater he’s seen on Ian more than a dozen times, blowing clouds of white through his nose. Lip doesn’t notice him until he’s at the gate, struggling to lift the latch because his hands are shaking so hard.

“Where’s Ian?” Lip asks. He takes another drag from his cigarette, cheeks hollowing. “Don’t tell me you and my brother finally went under the knife, surgically removed yourselves from each other’s hips?” He smirks, dirty. “Or other bits.”

“Shut the fuck up,” Mickey says, no real bite behind the words. A creeping dread settles in his pit and he swallows. “So you haven’t seen him?”

Lips’s face twists into confusion. “What? No, I haven’t seen him. He’s always with you.”

“Well he clearly ain’t,” Mickey snarls, irritated and wound up. He digs inside his jeans, pulls out the sticky note. “I ducked out for some shit and he was gone by the time I got back. Left this.”

Lip takes it, holds it as nimbly as a feather in his fingers, turning it over and over and over, like some hidden clue written in invisible ink will suddenly reveal itself. “Shit,” he says, stretching the word out past its full length. He runs the hand not holding the note into his hair, threading his fingers in and ruffling the ends up a bit. “Okay, it’s - let me get in contact with everyone. After that, if no one’s heard from him, we can get some bodies out on the streets looking. It won’t be as bad as last time. He’s medicated.” Mickey nods quickly, even though it wasn’t phrased as a question.

“Mind if I head upstairs?” Mickey asks.

Lip gives him a strange look. “What, you think I’m lying?”

Mickey resists the temptation to just shove past. “No, but seeing as my entire day is going to be a fucking scavenger hunt for that kid I thought, I don’t know, maybe I should cover every nook and cranny. That peachy keen with you?”

Seeming to weight the options in his head, Lip finally shrugs, and bows, sweeping his arms in an exaggerated welcoming gesture. Mickey rolls his eyes and grunts, taking the stairs inside two at a time. The room that Ian had shared with his brothers and Mickey, for a time, remains unchanged, save for a few extra bags of clothes heaped next to the bunk beds, which he assumes are Lip’s from college. None of it interests Mickey in the slightest, and he heads straight for the wall and the slanted ceiling bordering Ian’s former bed, his fingers ghosting over pictures of the brothers Gallagher grinning like they’re deranged and posters that would make Uncle Sam proud, landing on what he’s been searching for - a US map with red ink stars over six locations. He peels the crinkled paper off the wall, being extra careful to not rip at the edges, and pockets it.

The minute Mickey understood what the note meant, there was really no doubt in his mind that Ian was long gone, probably over Chicago borderlines by now. Unlike Mickey, given the choice between fight or flight, Ian would always pick the second and the Windy City was never quite big enough for him to hide out in. No, Mickey knows. Knows that he’ll run until those long legs of his can’t take another step, and even then, he’ll crawl, the stubborn bastard. Still, Mickey humors the cause, needing time to plot his next few moves. Lets Debbie interrogate him on the phone. Lets Fiona drop by, again with watered down guilt in her eyes, like through the shit storm she has going on in her own household, it was an inevitability that she would always end up back in Mickey’s living room, the weight of the world on her skinny shoulders. Lets Mandy drag him along to the swankiest clubs in Northside where the bouncers take one look at them and scowl like they fucked their mothers, and to the seediest ones, risking the chance of getting an STD just by walking through the double doors.

Mandy rests her head on Mickey’s shoulder and wraps one arm in his, hours after they had given up. They’re seated on stools in the last scummy bar they visited, both a couple of shots deep, and this is more intimate than Mickey’s used to from his kid sister. His heart breaks a little. He’s hurting and Mandy’s hurting and across town, buried somewhere under red archways and teal tainted upturned roofs in Chinatown, if the rolling updates on his phone are anything to go by, he’s sure Svetlana and Nika are hurting too. So, when Mandy asks, _what’s going to happen now?_ , and with the sting of another shot washing down his throat, setting flames to his lungs to ground him, Mickey turns into the top of her head, says, _easy, I’m gonna track the fucker down_. He gets a sloppy smile in return and he adds it to the list of things he plans on taking along.

 

_iii._

 

During the nights he’d spent on the small space of open floor below Ian, before he came out, a long ways removed from the moment everything changed, Ian would drop his arm over the side of his bed, dangling it like bait. Mickey fell for it every time. It was never comfortable, the awkward angle at which they lay, the way Ian had to twist his body just so and Mickey had to ignore the dull ache at his shoulder joint that followed not far behind because of his own suspended arm, but nothing about those little moments felt wrong or weak or even gay. It felt like a life line, a warm palm clasped around his, connected to a person who he didn’t want to let go of ever again.

Mickey never forgot that they weren’t alone, not for a second, but Ian would whisper, _they’re asleep_ , and, _you’re safe here,_ and the quick, confident softness of Ian being right fucking there, concrete and real and not scattered limbs in a Middle Eastern desert messed with his brain and made him believe, holding on tighter. Ian would tell him, voice picking up in speed and volume slightly, hitched syllable at the end of sentences, as it often does when he gets excited, about these ideas of his, video game apps and flipping houses and stocks for promising startup companies, race cars that sped by faster than Mickey was able to keep up with, every last one rushing to spew out of Ian. Always in the latest hours, when they were both clinging on to wakefulness, he would point to that stupid map, and those stars, and he’d recite their names like little lullabies, and murmur, _gonna end up in one of those cities, just you wait_ , and Mickey believed that, too.

Four days is how long it takes for Mickey to settle his business and stockpile a sufficient amount of cash. Kev cuts him a break and hands over a few weeks’ advance for their joint partnership with the rub-and-tug, if a bit reluctant to let the actual bills go when he yanks at them. Mickey puts Nika in charge of dealing with the waiting customers in the bar since she’s there more days than not lately, and because she can switch from calm nonchalance to bitch demon from hell in two seconds flat. Fiona shows up with Lip in tow and he swears up and down that he’ll keep them up to speed on any developments on the road. Fiona looks like she might cry, and Lip looks conflicted, as if he wants to run, but doesn’t know in which direction. They try to offer him some meager cash from their squirrel fund, but Mickey flat out refuses it.

The evening before Mickey leaves, the three girls buy him this ridiculous giant cookie with the words, _good luck, Mickey!_ , drawn in white icing, and he berates them over newly bought ice-cold beer for spending so much money on a fucking party and he’s so fond he has to bite hard at the inside of his cheeks to keep from smiling or saying something he’ll regret, like, _I’ll miss you, pieces of shit_. Svetlana hands him Yevgeny and beams when Mickey doesn’t flinch once, cuddling him stiffly, but close to his thumping chest all the same.

He’s generally a miserable drunk. After he gets wasted, Mickey stows away in the silence of his room, slumping in the too big bed. Some muffled Euro techno trash seeps under the slit of his door, but he ignores it, stares at his gator cage until his vision blurs and he can feel the prickle of tears at the corners. It takes him a while to realize Mandy’s snuck in, perched on the edge, her light frame hardly causing a dip in the mattress.

“This was stupid,” Mickey slurs.

Mandy nudges him playfully. “You’re welcome, asswipe.” She fiddles with the squirrel hat in her hands, waffle house outfit already on. Her hair is braided into a neat row running down her spine and her breath doesn’t smell a touch of alcohol. The current record for the longest time at a legitimate job belongs to Mickey, but he had Ian and he had Juvie. Mandy had driven out and applied by herself. She’s not too far off, going on nine months now, and Mickey knows she’s never called in a single sick day, not even when Kenyatta lived here and treated her like his own personal rag doll. A jolt runs through him. His kid sister is all grown up.

“What was the point, Mandy?” He asks, lump lodged in this throat. “I’m coming back as soon as I find him.”

He expects her to tell him off, to explain that it’s the principle of the thing, to slap him across the head and roll her eyes and repeat that fucking mantra of family is family. Instead, she gives him this knowing look, eyes wide and so much like their useless, shitty mother’s it makes him want to scream, and leans in to kiss him gently on the cheek.

“Night, Mickey,” she says, and the door’s clicking behind her before he can say anything back.

Early dawn rolls around and the sun, hung low and shy in the sky, has colors bleeding from it. Mickey boards the greyhound bus with a bright pink travel coffee mug Svetlana bought him in hand and a duffel bag packed to the brim slung behind his back. He finds a vacant spot near the back, drops his stuff next to him in the aisle seat, and yawns hard enough to hear his jaw click.

“Going to or going from?” An elderly man asks him from the other side of the aisle.

“Something like that,” Mickey mumbles, and the man seems to understand, chuckles quietly to himself and goes back to his dog-eared page.

Mickey smooths out Ian’s map under his palms. On the backside, the names of the cities stare back at him:

 

_New York City | Boston | Austin | Denver | San Diego | Portland_

 

He draws a solid line through the first and folds it back up, tucks it into the hidden pocket on the inside of his jacket. He has no idea where Ian is, but as the bus pulls from the curb and he can hear the low rumblings of the engine vibrating underneath his boots, it feels like a step in the right direction. Mickey lets himself worry about Ian. He lets himself worry about where he’s going to get the meds he needs and fucking sick pervs who are waiting on the sidelines for him to slip up, about whether he’s safe or if he’ll want to come back. The fear, old ones and new, carve at his insides, embed themselves and set up real estate in his brain.

The bus passes by the sandstone obelisk, and officially into Indiana territory, and everything is about the same, except Mickey doesn’t know the street names or the best spots to score a hit. He cranes his neck to look out the oval window beside him. It’s dangerous and new, a loaded gun, air his lungs have never inhaled, people on the sidewalk with different faces, and he pretends he’s not jittery and on edge. There was no fear this all-consuming for Mickey until he met Ian. He tries to remember what that was like.

 

_i. New York City_

 

New York comes to him wet and cold. Mickey’s bottom half is shot to hell from sitting on his ass for four hours straight, twenty one in total. He hauls the strap of the bag over his shoulder, kicking his legs around to regain some feeling, and starts for a diner he spotted a few blocks down.

The screen on Mickey’s phone reads 4:50 am, but the city had clearly woken a while ago. This, he knows; the carnal, grittiness that pervades every stone, every honk of a cab horn. The smell of rough spoilage. Mickey keeps his head down and lights a cigarette.

The diner, _Marlene’s_ in cursive, pastel blue on the roof, is a small mom and pop kind of place, tucked away in a row of local business shops, several of which still have their metal gates down. There's an ' _open 24/7_ ' sign on the door. Against the backdrop of bustling activity and high-rise buildings in Hell’s Kitchen, in Manhattan, it stands as a vestige of an older, slower life, a fossil in a modern world. The smell of eggs and crisp bacon greets Mickey the minute he walks in, and his stomach aches in hunger. The interior has a homey midwestern feel to it, with pale yellowed walls and green vertical paneling, a large part of the back is taken up by mirror plating with today’s special in neat handwriting. Only one other customer is there, a middle-aged man in a suit, forking at his meal, newspaper spread out on the main counter. Mickey grabs a seat in the corner booth.

A cheery brunette, tightly wounded curls piled on the top of her head, slides him a large cup of freshly-brewed coffee and a hello, eyes darting to his bag, shoved next to him in the middle of the quarter circle seat. Her smile widens. She’s clearly a morning person.

“New to these parts?” she asks, pulling out a small notepad from the back pocket of her jeans.

“Yeah, how’d you guess,” Mickey grumbles. He is clearly not a morning person.

“You got that desperate look.” When his head snaps up, the girl shrugs her shoulders. “Most people who run away to New York usually do. So what will you have?”

He clears his throat, licks at the seam of his mouth. “Pancakes and scrambled eggs. Also, before you go spouting more words of fucking wisdom, I’m not running away from anything.”

She freezes, but the tension seeps from her body quickly, and her expression softens, becomes almost affectionate. “Of course not. That was silly of me to assume. My apologies. I’ll have your order right out. ”

Mickey frowns when she starts to walk away. “What the hell was the purpose of the notepad?”

“It’s the illusion,” she replies, gesturing towards the rest of the diner. “Life is a whole lot easier on half speed sometimes. Customers come here for the whole package. This,” she says, giving the notepad a slight shake, “is a prop.”

Mickey gives an incredulous brow raise, but her back is already turned. After a few minutes, he slips his phone out and tries calling Ian. It’s pointless. Ian hasn’t answered since he went missing, the call going straight to voicemail. Mickey blames the diner for the sudden nostalgia growing in his gut, and maybe, he thought Ian would have liked this place, if they had come here together under different circumstances.

The girl brings back two heaping dishes of stacked pancakes and a shit ton of eggs, and it’s obvious that she’s trying to be extra friendly or kind. She gingerly places them in front of Mickey, but doesn’t move away. Instead, she sits down across from him.

“I was thinking, and correct me if I’m wrong, but you don’t strike me too much of someone who’s moving here for a job or anything. I mean, it’s not everyday a guy walks through those doors with that much of his life with him.”

Mickey’s face darkens, suspicious. “There a point?”

“The point is,” she continues, oblivious to the change or choosing to ignore it, “I think we can help each other out.”

“How’s that?” he asks.

“I had this roommate, real piece of work. She, for lack of a better phrase, flipped her shit and just up and left. Now, I need a new one pronto and I was wondering...,” she trails off, watching him expectantly.

“You’re asking me to move in with you.” Mickey says, flatly, mouth agape. “How have you lasted this long without getting murdered in your own fucking bed?”

“Lucky, I guess. It’s not like I go asking around in shady alleyways,” the girl snaps. “But, you look like you could use a break and I could use a hand with rent and maybe I like your face, or whatever.” She huffs, ears reddening slightly, and blows at the strands of hair that have fallen out of her bun. “Just think about it, okay? My shift ends in three hours. Hang around if you’re interested. Loiter. I’m Beth, by the way.”

Beth lifts herself off the seat and hesitates, hovering uncertainly, until he mutters, _Mickey_ , under his breath. She grins like he belongs in a trophy case.

He stays. Sits in the same booth and drinks his weight in coffee that never fails to be replenished. More customers wander in near the end of Beth’s shift and the diner comes alive with sounds of clicking utensils and barks of laughter. Two men, a gay couple, plop down in a booth three ahead of Mickey’s, sitting on the same side. One of them drapes an arm around the other and pulls him close, nuzzling into his jaw. It’s so intimate and open, raw in a way that hugs close, leaves bruises on hips and whispers, _this is belonging_. Mickey looks away. There is really no reason for him to stay. He only intends to stay in New York long enough to search for Ian and he should have told Beth that from the start, and he isn’t sure why, but he doesn’t budge an inch.

 

_ii._

 

The apartment is situated six blocks from the diner, closer to the greyhound bus station. It’s part of a string of similar looking buildings, squished together with no room to breathe, dipped in loud colors, zig-zags of fire escapes running down their front. Beth lives on the top floor and she chatters on, excited and bright, the entire trip, stopping only to fiddle with her keys and unlock the door.

The room it opens onto is small, cramped, everything Mickey’s used to. There are strings hung from wall to far wall, cobweb silk that stretch and cross above their heads, with sheets of paper dangling from clothespins. She leads him into a bare room that is roughly the size of his own at home, but with a better view, a large window that looks down to the street and out over the tops of rows and rows of carbon copied complexes to where the sky meets the earth. The rent is dirt cheap for the area and he has more than enough to last a few months, into early winter if he wanted, and surprisingly, it’s tempting.

“What are you doing here if you’re not running away?” Beth asks him, later, when they’ve navigated out to the fire escape. He’s taking a deep drag and she’s watching a woman walk her dachshund down below with those terrifying, sunken eyes that snag and never blink away.

“I’m looking for someone,” he replies.

“Stay with me,” she says, “’til you find them.” She gives him a crooked smile and all Mickey can see is that upward turn on another person’s face and his mind goes blank and he can feel pockets of skin where rigid needles have skewered him straight through.

He takes Beth up on her offer, forking over enough money to pay half the rent and utilities for the upcoming month, moving in right then and there without any formality or ceremony, his possessions already on the floor. They push her couch into his room and where it had stood, they drop a pair of pillows and a quilt she drags out from winter storage. For dinner that night, Beth finds a cajun pasta recipe on her computer, and as she diligently stirs at the noodles in boiling salted water so the strands won’t stick to the bottom of the pot, humming the theme song of Hawaii Five-O, Mickey dices a couple of bell peppers, sucks in his lips to keep from grinning.

They eat their meal on the makeshift fort in the living room as the street lights buzz on and paint shadows of the glass panes that creep towards their crossed legs, and it’s nice. It’s simple. After the knee-high level of shit they had to wade through, it’s what it should have been with Ian. He could even picture them ending up in a place like this down the road, eating pasta on a hardwood floor and watching the outside world fall asleep. It makes anger pump through his veins, makes him sick to his stomach, and he wants to hate Ian so fucking badly for that.

The next few weeks pass by as quickly as sand through a tipped hourglass. Mickey becomes less hopeful. Ian always talked about big cities and big dreams. New York seemed a perfect fit and he picked it first for that very reason, but Ian is in the wind and Mickey can’t find any lingering trace of him. Beth harps on him constantly to get a job, complaining that all he does the day long is mope around their apartment. _You need to get out there, Mickey. Interact with others. I can’t be the only person you have_ , she says. What she doesn’t know is that he sneaks out in the dark of night, goes to the bars and the clubs and searches the faces of the homeless who hold up cardboard signs on sidewalk corners. He has a picture of Ian, the same he kept in the pages of the magazine by the toilet at home, but he never shows her.

One day, the owner of Marlene’s, who rarely shows herself, walks purposefully up to his usual corner booth. It is noon and Beth is at home, napping off her early morning shift. The owner, disappointingly not named Marlene, tells him she needs a cook’s aid in the back, and that Beth had mentioned in passing that Mickey can handle a blade. He’s hired on the spot. Beth’s jaw drops when she wakes up and he’s lounging in their tiny kitchen, nursing a beer, with two light blue, button-down work shirts thrown over one shoulder and a wide smirk playing at his lips. That shuts her up.

 

_i. Boston_

 

August and a heat wave arrive at his doorstep before Mickey is able to cross out the second city from his list. He’d been so caught up in locating the redhead that he neglected everything else, but somewhere along the line things have shifted. He has clobbered together a life here, complete with a steady job that pays by the hour, a roof over his head, and a friend who he doesn’t fuck. Mandy calls him once every few weeks and puts him on speaker so he can talk to Svetlana and Nika, too. They ask him about the Big Apple and what he does on his downtime, about Beth and the apartment, and the famous cheesecake they always hear about, call him a fucking traitor because he admits their pizza isn’t half bad, but they never mention Ian. Not once.

A week long trip out of state happens as a pretense to visit Boston. Mickey and Beth both take vacation days at the diner, pack up their bags, and hop on a greyhound bus; the second time for Mickey, first for Beth. They leave at dusk and barely hit any traffic on the way there. Beth pulls out a deck of cards from her purse, but almost immediately falls asleep, slumped against Mickey. He fidgets until he’s sure he won’t wake to a numb and sore shoulder, then leans against the headrest behind him, shuts his eyes.

They check in to a Motel 6 and get a room that has one large bed and a Bible in the bedside table. Mickey waits until he can hear the soft wisps of Beth’s snores, grabs a room key, and leaves. He visits the local watering hole, a wall cut out, brick slab that reminds him of the Alibi. It’s last call and there are at least half a dozen Franks jostling at a pool table. One of them makes a dive for the 8 ball and another jabs at his flesh with a cue stick. Mickey orders a pint, and asks the bartender about a redhead, tall, probably can’t keep still, definitely can’t hold his drink worth shit, has a dumb as fuck smug face. The bartender’s smile is pitying as he shakes his head slowly side to side, says, _son, you’re my first non-regular in a while, everybody else is already here._

At noon that same day, the peak of the heat, when their shirts cling to their figures, Mickey and Beth take a trolley tour around the Seaport District with hopes of any relief from the crisp ocean breeze, and visit an aquarium at one of the stops where Mickey knows he has zero chance of running into Ian, but he’s since learned that he has a hard time saying no to Beth. The thing is, the more time he spends with her, the more he becomes convinced that their friendship is a fucking sham.

Beth’s father was born and raised West Virginia stock, but the photos hanging in her room are of her mother, who moved here from Kenya with nothing more than a small purse, a burlap sack, and the clothes hanging on her frame. She likes to wear cut-off jean shorts the entire year round, and tights regardless of whether or not it’s scorching hot, and Mickey’s plaid shirts, using a ponytail holder to tie them behind her like a tail. She wants to be a writer, a modern day James Joyce, and she has a typewriter she works at fervently when inspiration strikes her, hanging the pages above their heads ‘til she can figure out what story she’s been writing. Her favorite color is sea-glass green, peridot, even though her birthday is in February, because her ex-boyfriend Todd gave her a gemstone pendant of that shade and she fucking hates his guts now, but she wears it, paired with her sole little black dress, when she watches too many animated films and wants to pretend like she’s the long lost princess of a Russian dynasty.

Mickey knows so much shit about her, most of which he never asks to know, because she’s open and she’s honest and she trusts him. He offers absolutely nothing in return and it eats him up inside. He tries not to, but he starts to care for her. He tries not to, but she reminds him of Ian, a bit, and he can’t tell if it is better or worse, to never quite shake that presence, even when he’s hundreds of miles away and bumping elbows with someone else while strolling through a tunnel with an entire sea overhead. It’s not really fair for either of them that when she smiles or laughs, head thrown back in unquenched, carefree joy, pointing at a stingray gliding with its underside against the glass, all that passes through him is Ian, and when he smiles back, it’s not for her.

On the fourth day, Mickey thinks he spots him, a trace of bitter red through the veins of the crowd. A desperate panic sets his feet on fire and he’s off, weaving through, dodging left and right just to get closer. He tracks the bobbing head into the campus grounds of Boston University, and up the steps of an old brownstone, corners rounded from corrosion, steep peaks piercing the sky, before he stops. It’s not him. Mickey thinks he must have known from the first clear glimpse of the guy he got, Ian burned into his memory so clearly. He ends up sitting on the banks of the Charles River, a short stone's throw away, his pale skin soaking up the sun, guaranteeing a sunburn later, watching three long rowboats glide over the ripples, and he attempts to put himself in Ian’s shoes, to think, _if I wanted something better, where would I go?_ It doesn’t work. It doesn’t fucking work because he can’t fit his shoes and he can’t dream as big as Ian and, lately, it’s hard for him to consider something better than waking up to Mandy’s pancakes, Svetlana’s Russian warbling and Nika’s spoon fork orchestras. He’s going soft, he thinks, as he digs his cigarette bud into the rocks.

Mickey gives up on Boston, going to a few other dive bars after college guy, but finding nothing concrete. He can’t picture Ian here much, anyways. Compared to New York, and the home stomping grounds of Chicago, there is a claustrophobic smallness to Boston he knows Ian would hate, where the old historical districts push in on three sides, and the only escape being the North Atlantic.

When it rains on their last day, bullets hammering against the window, and they’re confined to their bed, he tells Beth everything short of saying the word. Chicago and a furious Mandy who demanded blood, meds with names that sound made up and a tire iron. He shows her the photograph with shaky fingers and he unfolds the map. Beth stares at Ian’s face unrelentingly, doesn’t look wounded or betrayed. Her face is schooled into a casual blankness. She traces the bent corner of the map and rubs at the New York star.

“Damn, Mickey, you pulled,” she says, a sly smirk appearing, “I was always curious as to what types caught your eye.” She hands him back the picture and he thumbs at his lip distractedly, places the photograph on his thigh. Beth folds her legs into her body, resting her chin on her knee. “He looks like someone you would go after.”

“Yeah,” Mickey agrees, too damn tired to put on a front. He pauses, mouth open, jaw misaligned to one side. “You’d like the bastard. The two of you are alike, a little.” He doesn’t meet her eye because he’s afraid of what he’d see there.

“Hey, don’t,” she says firmly, “You’re allowed to miss people. It doesn’t make you wrong or less.”

“You don’t fucking get it,” he replies.

“No, I get it,” she says, “God, I get it. But, you have no claim on feeling sorry for yourself. It’s not a birthright. Stop with the remorseful vibe and stop painting me with a halo, you tit. I didn’t start talking to you at the diner because I thought you had a pure soul or deep eyes I wanted to drown in. You were my Ian. You reminded me of someone who’s gone, too.”

Mickey shoots her an arched eyebrow, “Who?”

This time, it’s Beth who hesitates, who shifts her gaze. When she does speak, her voice quivers. “My brother, Danny. He,” she clears her throat and one of her legs drops down to the bed, “he died, a while back. Car accident. It wasn’t anyone’s fault, except maybe mother nature, but I lived with that guilt for years. Mickey, it decays you. I promise it’s not worth it, not for me, not even for him.”

The dull pain, the sweet ache, in Mickey’s chest beats heavier, demands his attention and he’s not sure if it’s because he wants to hold on or to let go, but it never leaves, merely dulls and intensifies in rapid succession, like twitching blinks or a machine gun firing. He wonders how it would feel if or when it does, if he will feel lighter than air. He doesn’t want to float away. He wants to stay grounded. In some ways, in a lot of ways, him and sadness have become close.

“Is it better?” He asks.

Beth stares at him and doesn’t stare at him, and Mickey suddenly understands what it must be like to see a ghost. “It gets easier,” she says.

 

**Author's Note:**

> Three things: First, there is honestly no reason this should be a two-parter except for the fact that I wanted to get something in for gallavich week and I'm not finished (whoops); Second: this is my first ever gallavich fic!!; And third: I have a tumblr (lipschwitzsgallagher.tumblr.com); come yell angry rants or whisper sweet lovings at me


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